


Memories

by indyana



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Dead Jessica Moore, F/M, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Sam Winchester, POV Sam Winchester, Past Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29988435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indyana/pseuds/indyana
Summary: Sam Winchester knows ghosts. Memories are worse.
Relationships: Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [Prompts_From_The_Weird_World_of_Tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Prompts_From_The_Weird_World_of_Tumblr) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> "Memories are the worst kinds of ghosts."
> 
> (Created by @truebluejoong)

Memories are the worst kinds of ghosts.

Sam Winchester knows ghosts. He's hunted enough of them, used salt and iron and flame to sever their last ties to the world of the living. He's been thrown around by them, bled by their spectral hands. Ghosts are real, and they are dangerous. That's why the Winchesters hunt them. But for Sam, memories are far worse.

For one, they're persistent. You can't banish them or exorcise them. Digging up what remains of a memory just leads to more pain, fresh as the day it was made. The fact that it's in the past doesn't make a memory less palpable, less treacherous.

You also can't run from a memory. Ghosts at least are anchored around an object, a place. Memories, they follow you; they are always with you. There's no running from them. They haunt the quiet spaces of your mind, rising up into thought as suits them, sometimes in defined patterns and other times at apparent random.

It's been more than a decade and thousands and thousands of miles since Jess burned. Sam still wakes in the dark some nights, heart racing, eyes turning upward, half expecting to see her hanging there, bloody, aflame. He remembers all her smiles… the caring ones, the ebullient ones, the seductive, the sad. They all cut him like shards of glass when they flash through his awareness.

Rolling in their bed, her soft thighs clasped around his waist, his lips dragging along the side of her throat as she gasped encouragement. The low murmur of her voice as she lay next to him, as they discussed plans and futures that were never to become real but still survive in his memory. A ring never bought. A family never formed. Jess smiling and teasing. Jess gentle and comforting. Jess crying. Jess dying.

She appears to him at night in dark thoughts and looping nightmares. He catches glimpses of her in the flesh, in the way a woman smiles or laughs or tosses her hair. Whenever a monster or god digs into his head, they find her there, draw up her phantom to use against him.

He knows she'll never stop haunting him.

...And if some book tomorrow offered him a spell to cleanse his mind of her, he knows just as surely that he'd never use it.

Memories are the worst kinds of ghosts.

Because, as much as they may hurt you, you can never let them go.


End file.
